South Central Reporter

Macoupin County Board Economic Development Committee met June 25.

Here are the minutes provided by the Committee:

I. CALL TO ORDER

1. Roll Call

The roll call was taken through the sign in sheets attached.

II. PUBLIC HEARING

Starr asked Dan Fisher from the City of Gillespie to discuss the grant that was received and the reason for the public hearing. Fisher said that the grant had a 2 phase application, and while the first application was completed, the second phase requires stakeholders input through a public hearing. This was the second public hearing and was an opportunity for those to receive the grant on what they may be doing as well as members of the public to discuss how they would like it to be spent.

Kilduff said that as a Board member he was here to listen and was here also listening to what potential Staunton entities are doing. On the county level, one thing that had been tossed around was a grant writer to help not only the county find, apply, and administer grants but also help other local governments do it as well.

Suzie Campbell with the Village of Dorchester said that they were hoping to use their grant to make their Village Hall ADA compliant which will help them apply for other rural development grants. She also was hoping that funding would go to Macoupin County trying to develop the area economically throughout the area.

Steve Moore, Staunton School District, said that since he was doing their grant on their own, they needed their own public hearing, but he was hoping to use the money to help in the shop buildings with things such as HVAC.

John Chapman, Bunker Hill City, solar project and investing in parks. He was also interested in pooling his money as was mentioned at the last public hearing to help develop economically in the county.

Dan Fisher also spoke about pooling grant money from all the awarded districts to help develop some projects as well as try to hire not just a grant writer but an office that could not only handle economic development throughout the county as well as help facilitate cooperation with the local governments. He was hoping that the county would contribute $100,000 and all of his subapplicants would contribute $100,000 total towards creating that structure and also have folks behind it that can help sell it whether to potential investors or other local governments. That is what is needed to have this program be successful. This pooled effort would potentially have $250,000 budget and would allow for a dynamic office. The mechanisms can be worked on going forward and if it doesn't work out, the money would be returned to each group for their own spending.

There was also a discussion of wrapping the Macoupin CEO program into it or expanding it so an insrurctor with a masters could be hired to not only run the CEO program, but an adult business boot camp, as well as be the person to help handle recruiting potential businesses.

Starr discussed that the easiest thing to qualify for in this program would be either personnel costs or engineering like costs to do all of the leg work before trying to do a brick and mortar project. There also needed to be real world costs listed in the application, not a ballpark estimate.

Starr also discussed that the county wasn't really even in the game for economic development and that would be an important investment. He also believed that there needed to be those working on grants for the county since currently there wasn't really one so they end up going to Clerk Duncan and asking him to help so that would be a wise investment.

Scott Reichmann with the Macoupin CEO Program discussed economic development and his experience with it in his previous job with H&H Construction. When he worked down in O'Fallon, Missouri, there was a dynamic economic development guy who would have everything ready for someone wanting to move in from here's the ground, here's the investment, here's your financing that made it too easy for someone to move in successfully. That is the type of thing the county needs to have a point guy who handles it successfully compared to just saying they have acres ready to go that is just a cornfield and can't compete with another area that already has the land ready, infrastructure ready, and financing ready.

Starr said that the economic development committee would be meeting soon to finalize what the spending plan would be.

http://macoupincountyil.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=15&ID=3939&Inline=True